День космонавти&

[alexpgp]

Forty years ago today, Yuri Gagarin was lofted into space atop a modified ICBM, thus beginning human exploration of space.

That's something to celebrate.

Forty years later, after a few visits to our nearest neighbor (the Moon) and a handful of attempts at long-duration flights (Salyut, Spacelab, Mir, ISS), we're still stuck in low-earth orbit, talking about going to Mars, yet nobody knows who and how and when such an effort will be funded.

If the same type of progress had been made in aviation over the first 40 years of its development, we'd be the beneficiaries of a series of irregular flights - made for scientific purposes - between airports several hundred miles from one another.

But today is not the time to be thinking of what might have been. It is a time to celebrate what has been accomplished.

It is also time, I think, to redouble our efforts in response to Gagarin's famous departing line: "Поехали!" ("Let's go-o-o!").

Cheers...

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

Government has shown that it's only ability is to be able to consume endless amounts of money in return for producing only the most limited, safe, constipated results. Our only hope is private enterprise, which government will do its best to shoot down.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid you're right.

Never fail to keep in mind that an elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

OTOH, it's the only game in town.

Cheers...

Re:

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

At the moment, maybe, but not forever...